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[May] I start this speculation?

Discussion in 'News' started by Contaminator, Mar 13, 2018.

  1. Solar

    Solar Well-Known Member

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    I am glad there are female Knights

    I just didn't see much of a reason to crow about it.
     
  2. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    Addendum: TAGs of any kind should not be taken into account, since until Limited Insertion came... And also, the Su Jian is there...

    As for the Aragoto & Asuka... Bikes, and I rest my case there XD

    Finally, about Zanshi Vs Keisotsu, consider how until very recently the proxying was much less lax, thus the basic troop in the starter (vanilla or ISS) would see more table than a troop you buy with the very specialized sectorial starter. Which leads me to...

    I don't know about you, but I have the whole range of Aleph and the Greeks (aside from Diomedes, Ajax, Hector and the Dactyl character), and my lists would show that CB could remove all of the Greeks from Aleph if they were to provide a smoke-throwing melee-capable warband and some MSV2 with long range weapons. Because when I play vanilla, I play "vedic", and when I want to play crazy greeks, I go for the ASS (pun intented. Totally.). I can translate this to YJ into "play with tons of fireteam options" (ISS), Meleeeeeeeeee assault! (JSA), and "look, HI and camos everywhere (Vanilla, for the Guilang, Hac Tao, Daofei, ninjas, Yan Huo... and the Shaolins for smoke, of course).

    So this data can be taken as an objective truth and justification for "zomg YJ cries are so baseless", or as data without context (among other options, of course).
     
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  3. Xeurian

    Xeurian Well-Known Member

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    Indeed. I wasn't around on the old forums and didn't even know this was an issue. I may actually pick them up in the future as they are pretty damn cool.
     
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  4. mothman

    mothman Well-Known Member

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    I play yu jing but im happy to see JSA split off their aesthetics never full meshed with Yu Jing I found.

    However there is 1 thing I think you should consider with these stats, that oniwaban and shinobu are basically the same unit with a minor upgrade, ppl take them both to fill in the same roll one is just a buffed version you spend more for. So id personaly look at the list as 20% oniwaban/TO cc monster use. Putting them at 2nd most used profile and ranking alongside hac tao in usage (Im of the belief that Hac Tao likely sat in a similar role in most peoples lists and if hac tao wasnt around oniwaban type units would likely hit 30-40% use) Personally I would have liked an oniwaban type unit to stay in yu jing vanilla, even if its just "ronin oniwaban" with limited access to profiles and AVA 1 or something as some of them clearly work as mercs as seen in outrage.

    Also on the tokusetsu, sure she is a point cheaper but she also has a better skillset, courage is very useful for getting her to stay where needed. Effectively she is 1 point cheaper + she gets an extra useful skill vs Yisheng who gets + 1 BS. She is more than just a points save shes a flat upgrade for less points.
     
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  5. csjarrat

    csjarrat Well-Known Member

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    Honestly I'd be wary with that metric of zanshi vs keisotsu. If that isn't starter-set skew from new players then I'm not sure what is lol
     
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  6. BenMoss

    BenMoss Well-Known Member

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    As has already been pointed out Oniwaban and Kitsune compete for the same role: Assassin. Nothing else in the YJ list does this (ninjas can infiltrate but lack the tools to hit hard targets so they are restricted to what I would consider skirmish troops). So those 2 units account for 100% more usage in that role than anything else.

    The Raiden on 14% looks really low? Now go back and compare it to other defensive ARO units on the list. TR bots were around 20% from memory and then all the snipers were around 3% or lower. I guess you could put Hac Tao in there for people taking the missile launcher variant rather than the HMG but that's only a portion of the 20% Hac Tao usage. So it's the second most used ARO piece after the TR bots and its not far behind them.

    I couldn't see the stats for standard arogatos which puts them somewhere between 9-4% usage. This one is harder to quantify in a role but mobile specialist (hacker) can be covered by the weibing remote and in a different way by infiltrating specialists. In most missions the best specialist is the one the opponent can't attack at all as it isn't on the table, ideally one that can infiltrate as it means fewer orders needed late game (when orders are scarce) to get it into position. In this sense the arogato is in direct competition with the ninja and guilang which arguably do the role better. The exception is missions where there are multiple locations that need to be tagged where the mobility on the bike offsets starting in position like the ninja. Most missions will take the ninja for this reason but when you do need that mobility there isn't really anything to fill that role.

    So actually what those numbers tell me is that the two Oniwaban were really important (especially as they excert threat on an opponent even when not on the table due to the nature of hidden deployment), Raiden were by far our best ARO unit that isn't a TR bot and as previously discussed the Tokusetsu Butai are just flat out the best options for that role too.

    Now, before you go and disregard all of this as standard YJ whining or the like it's worth pointing out that I actually think the JSA/YJ split could be a good thing (in the long run) as it should help them carve out a bit more of a niche for both. Personally I liked the internal conflict in the fluff but others didn't and felt it was unsustainable. I'm not beholden to it so I'll happily let that slip.

    However, the way this has been handled has not been well managed at all. I expect better of professional game developers. There is more than enough knowledge out there about why taking content away from players generates negative reactions that a plan should've been in place to account for that transition. As an example, watch this:


    Also, I think the zhanshi number was probably buffed relative to the keisotsu because you sometimes have a couple of points spare in a list and while other profiles have already been selected for specific purpose the straight upgrade on a cheerleader to a higher BS version uses up those points quite effectively. Plus there is a zhanshi LT that doesn't cost SWC so they are also favoured there.
     
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  7. Lothair

    Lothair Well-Known Member

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    How would you handle it then? I'm really curious @BenMoss
     
  8. Rizzy

    Rizzy Armchair Strategos L3

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    Finally got around to watching the seminar. Interesting stuff.
    I am surprised so few people used Yuriko Oda in Vanilla, I always found her useful.

    Yu Jing support pack and Zoe resculpt really please me. Magister Knights are cool, but they are not really hyperdynamic (rimshot!). Pose-wise I really prefer the old ones. I'm also a bit confused why the cool shoulder-fausts are gone and the light shotgun looks more like a full sized shotgun. Combined with their poses the Magisters look more like regular fire support troops than close combat troops. I like the female knight with sword and scabbard, though.

    Tunguska looks really, really tasty! I need to get painting so I can justify buying them...
     
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  9. Brawler

    Brawler Well-Known Member

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    @BenMoss : First of all, good job on the thoroughly well-written post. I agree with you on many points, and of course, the JSA/YJ-split could've been handled differently. There's probably plenty of studies on the most optimal way of breaking this kind if news to the players. However, I do get the feeling that it's pretty much a lose/lose situation in most scenarios except adding the sectorial and keeping the YJ as it was at the same time. Something tells me that that scenario wouldn't have been well received either.

    ______________________________________________________________________________


    I'm not writing this to stoke the flames of conflict even more after the April-thread going totally bananas. But I still have a couple of ideas that I just feel I need to get off my chest. These might not be perfect, but someone might have thoughts on them.

    In essence, the uprising started with Bostrias "something big is going to happen, and some might love it, and some might hate it".
    The reaction in some players should go along the lines of Big = Good. Loving it = Gooder. Hate it = Mentally preparing for some kind of loss.

    After the first stage they went with the "enough"-picture, and pretty much narrowed it down to something probably happening to YJ/JSA. This was in hindsight a pretty clear indication. And using the word enough means something that has been happening for a while has to stop. Somewhere around here, I imagine a lot of YJ-players getting itchy and probably coming to the insight that the love/hate-quote had to do with their army.

    And bang, the army splits. CB adds a huge batch of updated miniatures, telling the players that this will be awesome. In essence, this was the phase where CB broke your toys and then handed you a shiny new one to make you forget about the old one. And I get this, it pretty much feels like a textbook move on how to implement/change an existing product. Because that's what this game is, a product.

    And here we are, in the aftermath. Of course, CB knew that some players might not like this at all (first quote after all) and now they're releasing stats on units usage. To be honest, I think that those stats were the first thing that made CB consider a split, even before any plot or story was written. They looked at the stats and said: "damn, we have to sell more of those units" because that's what a company would do.
    In the end, I still think they did the best they can, which is better than enough.(perhaps except the green text) I think CB was well-prepared for a lose/lose situation. Letting the miniatures rot in a warehouse was an even worse option since it would mean less money.

    Just like any other collectible gaming product, infinity isn't immune to change. It happened before (ko dali, exrah) and will happen again. My wild guess is that 98% of the outraged YJ-players will settle down and eventually enjoy the game again, perhaps even a bit more. Out of the last 2% growling about quitting/throwing their YJ about 95% will settle down as well. These are not fact-based numbers, they are illustrations of what CB would count as acceptable losses implementing Uprising. And they did implement it, so I'm pretty sure that despite peoples temper and ideas of how this could've been handled better, throwing out split-second ideas like they think an internationally known company hasn't done their homework. That's... that's just arrogance. A majority of people thinking they have a better idea of how to have done this differently probably has a better idea for them.

    It's a wonder I haven't read any posts about how the merc-companies(EDIT: And ITS.(anonymous contributor)) might be a way to clear some shelves in the company warehouse, I mean, did Druze see a lot of play before?


    Not a single line of this post was written with malicious intent, this is purely a personal perspective on the aftermath of the Uprising.
     
    #309 Brawler, Mar 26, 2018
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2018
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  10. BenMoss

    BenMoss Well-Known Member

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    @Brawler no issues at all with the tone of the response (it's quite refreshing from a lot of the earlier trolling from others in some threads), I'm all for reasonable discussion :)

    To some extent, I think you're probably right that it was always going to be a tough transition for CB and how they communicated that should probably be driven by what their ultimate goal was. This makes it a little hard to answer @Lothair as to what I would've done differently but I'll give it a go (bearing in mind I haven't had the last year to plan this).

    There are a few potential motivations for this move of which I'll list 4 as these are the first that come to mind:

    1. Yu Jing aren't selling as well as they should and the design team have a great idea for IA but it would have awkward cross over with the current vanilla lineup
    2. JSA aren't selling as well as they should given the obvious draw of the theme
    3. The aesthetics (and/or mechanics) of JSA and Yu Jing don't mesh very well on the tabletop creating limited reuse of shared models and an expensive production split between the ranges
    4. The bigger narrative around an evolving storyline is important across all factions and the uprising gives us an ideal avenue to explore that without having to have the Combine wipe everyone out

    Now it should be pointed out that those motivations aren't mutually exclusive but they do place constraints on what solutions are available to make the split. So let's take each of the points above and look at what changes could be made.

    If the primary motivation is point 1 then the goal is to remove the troublesome profiles from Yu Jing but it is not necessary to remove ancilliary ones. In essence if the issue is the presence of assassin units such as Kitsune or Oniwaban then they have to go (to make room for some co-ordinated drop AD HI or whatever) but the profiles such as the Raiden or Arogato could stay. This obviously vastly reduces the impact of what is being removed and has the benefit that you can also upsell the positives ("we've got something really exciting coming in IA that's going to fill this gap and you'll love")

    If the primary motivation is point 2 then you create alternate bridging points narratively to tie them to other model collections. The other NA2 factions are good examples of this bridge. Pick one of the other popular factions (such as Pan O or Nomads) and create a mix with them and JSA. By picking an existing large player base (and ideally one already tied to a starter box) you only require players to pick up a small number of JSA models to field an army. This then draws them across into their own faction.

    Let me expand on that for a moment as you could go a step further. The uprising book would be the story of the Uprising. Some Japanese troops stayed loyal to Yu Jinq, some gained assistance from the Nomads in fighting for their freedom while others took refuge with Pan O in the hope they would fend off their nemesis hyperpower. JSA get their own list, a Pan O/JSA merc force and Nomad/JSA merc force are released and Yu Jing sees a reduction in AVA of some units (but preferably balanced by some AVA changes to represent their increased militarisation in response to the uprising). Now 3 factions have links into usable JSA without going all in on buying an entirely new faction plus it draws from existing large factions balancing out the overall playerbase. Perhaps you don't even release JSA as their own list at this point, just do the cross faction "merc" companies. Ultimately if your goal is to sell more JSA you want more links into the army, not necessarily to cut them off from Yu Jing.

    Motivation 3 is a tricky one and I agree it was creating an oddly divided aesthetic. The thing here is that it looked odd because there are really 4 themes here: Samurai, ninja, anime and Imperial China. The odd one out is Imperial China but that is theoretically the dominant one in the background and this is made more difficult as the aesthetic used on a lot of the armour is very practical rather than alluding back to Imperial China. If you look at the Domaru or Tanko you see the obvious connection to their samurai roots. The same approach could've been taken to the Chinese armour. Use reference from elements of the Three Kingdoms, give Imperial agents more extravagant dragon engraved armour that projects the image YJ are trying to project... and then do the same with another asian culture as well. Now your aesthetic is this fight for cultural dominance by drawing on their past from these different traditions.

    If the issue is the mechanics then you either need to address it as in point 1 above or find ways of creating interdependencies. This can be a bit of a rules/profiles rework (that again you could sell as happening due to restructuring in the uprising) but without knowing exactly what the perceived issues are its hard to be more descriptive than that.

    If the primary motivation is about telling a narrative about a changing world then I'd argue that building multiple bridge across factions as outlined for point 2 actually has an impact on far more players as you are impacting what's happening for 3 factions (plus your new construct). The world and options of how to play has reached more people and you haven't alienated your primary bridging faction.

    Which brings us nicely to arguably the greatest failure of the approach that was taken. Yu Jing are the primary connection to JSA as many of those players were initially drawn to the Asian theme and are likely to have a number of the models already. As was covered in the video I linked above loss aversion means that the negative impact of taking something away is three times as strong as the impact of gaining that same thing. There is no possible way that removing all those Yu Jing profiles was going to be well received by Yu Jing players and if they are inevitably in that negative mindset then you aren't selling to your primary audience.

    That should cover how the motivations of CB would change what they would do with the uprising. There are also a few more general points about the manner in which those changes should be conveyed. Ultimately these can be sumarised as show respect for your customer/players.

    A number of players will be upset if you take content away from them (see loss aversion video above). Don't make fun of that. Don't belittle it. Whatever you do don't tell them they're upset at nothing or that they haven't lost anything when they blatantly have. This is an exercise in rebuilding a relationship (that for potentially totally valid reasons) you've just damaged. You need to rebuild trust. That normally starts with an apology and an explanation for why those changes needed to happen. And while you're rebuilding that relationship bear in mind that every time you do something wrong (see my list at the start of this paragraph) you probably need to do an extra three things right to compensate on top of whatever you actually needed to do to start with.

    The initial announcement at Gencon that something divisive was coming was a good start. There is a common phrase in business/marketing: Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and then tell them you told them. That Gencon announcement put the idea in people's heads. Next step should have been to say which faction it was going to impact but taking care not to have it just come across as a disingenuous marketing ploy (I get that CB like to do their big reveals for new sectorials and as a go to tactic that's fine but if you're culling large parts of a faction you probably want to adapt that strategy a bit). This doesn't have to say when it will happen but that there's a big upheaval coming in faction X in the near future more details should be available around Y. Then you make the split and finally you close by re-iterating the reasons you had to make the split in the way you did.

    In summary, I think the strategy around what exactly changed could have been more tightly focused in the first place to create a smoother transition into the use of JSA and the execution of that strategy should have been handled with more respect for the players the chosen solution was going to impact.

    Does that answer your question?
     
  11. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    See this logic is wrong. JSA has never been rotting in a warehouse, in fact it's one of their best selling lines. The fact that it was selling so amazingly well was what delayed them bothering to do resculpts for it for so long. We know this, because we've been told this by Bostria.

    The stats you're looking at are purely for useage in Vanilla tournament armies that bothered to report the data. Not everybody reports their data, because not everyone is like me and spends $25 for their local group to make sure each event is reported. That in no way properly reflects JSA model sales.
     
  12. IcariumVNam

    IcariumVNam Well-Known Member

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    Arghh, too many good new releases. Picking the next army is getting tricky. Tunguska are finally taking us towards the futuristic elite soldier look so are almost a must. A Military Order force maybe, just because that many knights painted can't possibly look bad on the table. More Japanese to fill out the old army. Or start a Vietnamese style Merc Force of all females....Damn you CB. Also a new bloody Raicho and Raysat when I've convereted them both!

    I will not buy a new army until I paint my old stuff....I will not buy a new army until I paint my old stuff.. I will not...
     
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  13. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    I'd like to point there that "list usage metrics" is not the same as "sales metrics". I have nearly 93% of Aleph's current model line, and I proxy the Spitfire Deva (because I have so many, and Baldy is so... meh), I place Achilles on the table (yet I have the 3 models of him), or I use the Mk4 HRL posthuman... using the female Wu Ming model (I don't have YJ/JSA. I just "mine" their line for extra models). I also have a Giraldez's Juana as my 2nd Myrmidon Officer (now the main one thanks to the proxy rules, and no, I don't have PanO), and the Kanren hacker as my 2nd Danavas...

    So model usage in lists is not the same thing as sales metrics. While I agree that the usage metrics suggest that the split is, mechanically, "low impact", it is not a reliable indicator of how YJ and JSA model sales where doing... specially if we take into account that the Shikami and the Tactical Bow ninja have been the only JSA-related releases at least between Red Veil and the Uprising box, so sales of JSA would need to come from new players for JSA (either existing customers expanding, or new customers), which meant those new players would usually limit their buying to the good looking new models... of which the JSA had few.
     
  14. zapp

    zapp Well-Known Member

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    Nice try :-)
     
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  15. Lothair

    Lothair Well-Known Member

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    TL:DR :laughing: just joking. Thank you for the well written reply. While I agree that taking sth away hurts three more times and giving sth in return, I still believe they handled the transition really well. No matter what you do - the result is the same: people don't like change, and they have a company to run. So you've got to break some eggs...
     
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  16. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    I will for sure concede that this was inevitably going to break a few eggs no matter what CB did, but I'm wondering, for @Lothair and others who consider this to have been handled well, what do you envision as a poorly-handled path to this same end state?
     
  17. Pierzasty

    Pierzasty Null-Space Entity

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    You're a funnny guy.
     
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  18. Lothair

    Lothair Well-Known Member

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    Have you followed Games Workshop for the last 15 years or so? ;)

    EA and what they did to Bioware also comes to mind.
     
  19. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    EA is awful. GW is awful. Not a single argument there.

    But that's not really what is under discussion. "It would be worse if CB just squatted JSA and removed their profiles entirely" is very true, but that didn't happen, whether you paint CB as a good company or one like EA/GW driven by MBAs and thirst for immediate profit, that wasn't going to happen.

    Corvus Belli decided to separate a sectorial from a faction. We know how they chose to do it. We've had a number of posters present critiques of how it was done poorly and suggestions for how it could have been handled differently.

    If you are going to assert that this was handled 'really well' what I'm interested in is what they could have done to have you say it was handled badly.
     
  20. Alphz

    Alphz Kuang Shi Vet. Retired.

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    He did just tell you. if they straight up just invalidated a whole bunch of profiles would be worse.

    For a non-yu jing player. If they split JSA and then spent the next 3-4 months releasing predominantly yu jing models to fill both lines would be an unwelcome change to the usual even split.

    We've had a number of posters tells us how they want things to go, giving no shits about how it might affect other people which is unsurprisingly hypocritical. Sure, they could keep JSA in yu jing until IA drops, but it really lessens the actual changes in the universe lore. Either they try fluff it as loyalists vs traitors or just ignore it in lore space. Both of those feel crap to me.

    Sometimes its good to be forced to do something different.
    Life is full of money spent on things which didn't bring you the same value, so I honestly find the "lost value" arguments to be the weakest part of any critique. and once you drop that out, most critique becomes purely emotional spitballing about how CB could have appeased "me" best. Which as being the person who will suffer as a result of said "Better solutions", I emphatically disagree.
     
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